Wisdom can only be gained through experience and clarified by speaking with others. In the novel, "Bless Me, Ultima," by Rodolfo Anaya, the main character, Antonio Luna Marez, is on a quest to understand all of the issues present in his life, and gain the wisdom necessary to make important decisions regarding his future. It described the hardships of a young child and how these lessons helped him to begin to understand life. There were many characters within the novel I felt aided in the spiritual development of Antonio, but the one that stands out the most is Ultima, who came to stay with the Marez family because of her old age. Ultima was an essential part of the story, because she provided Antonio with the guidance he needed and yearned for as a growing adolescent. Though she was an central component throughout the novel, the character that I feel who assisted Antonio with discovering spirituality and finding himself, but played a minuet role was Maria Luna Marez, his mother. Maria Luna Marez, is an extremely devoted Catholic, and tries to raise her children to follow the same ways she has. She is the daughter of a farmer, and the descendant of the first priest of the Luna region. Maria wants very badly for her youngest son Antonio to become a priest. She believes, that he possesses the gift of knowledge, and wants Antonio to follow her Luna-family tradition by growing up to be a calm well-mannered man; she dreams of Antonio becoming a priest, and tries to instill in him the value of knowledge and farming. "You will be like my brothers. You will be a Luna, Antonio. You will be a man of the people, and perhaps a priest (9)," Maria states, as she is trying to tell her son not to worry about his father's brothers, because he wi... ... middle of paper ... ...elf and where he fit into this life that he had. She made him believe that many things were sins against God, and he would be punished if he so much as thought about them, but she never told him why they were sins and why people continued to do them; so he went on a quest for knowledge to find out what it was his mother along with other people were trying to keep him away from. Maria loved her family, and made sure that she provided for them, but when it came to religion she could only teach them what she had been taught all her life, which provided a biased opinion, in that she believed the the Catholic religion was what was right, and anything else would be a sin against God. She tried to protect Antonio, but everyone knows there is no protect from life, it comes and engulfs us into this whirlpool of situations and tragedies, and we are merely pawns in its game.
Antonio’s mother, Maria Márez, says that "growing into manhood is a sin" because she believes that the pure quality that is bestowed on to children from god is lost when a boy becomes a man. She fears that Antonio will lose his pureness, so she constantly urges him to become a priest because she believe that God is the only one to “save” him from the destructive ways of manhood.
Townsend organizes her narration of these events around the life and role of Malintzin. She takes the attention off of Cortes because she wants...
The naiveté of the main characters actions parallel the types of people that exist in society today. Such people strive for much more than they can realistically aspire to be with the belief of the possibility of success obscuring their perspective. On the other hand, people erring on the side of caution, or rather, pessimism, have a less biased opinion and thus mold their actions to better accommodate the possible adverse aftermath. Unfortunately for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, they had more in common with Don Quixote than the “Debbie Downers” of the world. Miguel de Cervantes alludes to the beginning of the gradual decline of Spain to point out that such optimism is prevalent in the everyday workings of society. During the late 1400s, the Spanish Monarchy, with the goal of spreading Christianity, outlawed the practice of Islam and Judaism, forcing followers of these “abominations” to flee. The grandeur of the aftereffects concealed the extent to which the so-called “Heretics” aided and catapulted Spain’s
Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima is a magical-realism novel about Antonio, a young boy at the mere age of six turning seven, realizing the many cruelties the world has to offer. As he matures, Antonio is conflicted while trying to choose between the career expectations from his two divergent families and attempting to figure out a true religion. Anaya depicts hidden messages to help the reader comprehend a perceptive insight of Antonio’s inner schism through symbolism.
It all began with a young hidalgo (a member of the minor nobility in Spain) falling in love with a beautiful but lowly girl, María. Some years ago, the young hidalgo fell in love with María. María had a casita--a little house--where the young hidalgo would visit and bring his friends. In almost every way, they shared a happy life together. Eventually, María bore him two or three children. Everything was well except that their marriage was not blessed by the church, as his parents knew nothing about the arrangement. When his parents found out about María, they would not allow him to marry her and would not accept her as his wife nor her children as their grandchildren. They went on and urged him to marry a more suitable lady to give them grandchildren; this "suitable lady" was also a member of the minor nobility in Spain, also very beautiful. At some point in time, he ga...
... Evidently, Maria Teresa is being selfish and failing to recognize her sister’s bold act in hoping to achieve freedom. Focusing on her own freedom and safety, Maria Teresa loses sight of the kind consideration that she developed in her childhood.
The author explains different situations she has been exposed to throughout her life. The main factor that differentiates her case from the others is her level of education. She has been educated and has been exposed to two different cultures. Due to these factors, she knows how to behave under different circumstances. A good example is when a drunk man offended her and she reacted by walking away instead of creating a big discussion. Maria’s friend complemented her for the cool handling of the situation. Another reason why she feels so proud of herself is because she took advantage of that education chance and does everything possible to keep growing up. She explains that sometimes she is sent to that “kitchen” where she belongs. Her genes will follow her everywhere and not matter where she is at, people will keep asking her where is she from.
Family is one of the most important institutions in society. Family influences different aspects of a person’s life, such as their religion, values, morals and behavior. Unfortunately, problems may arise when an individual’s belief system or behavior does not coincide with that of family standards. Consequently, individuals may be forced to repress their emotions or avoid acting in ways that that are not acceptable to the family. In the novel The Rain God, written by Arturo Islas, we are presented with a story about a matriarchal family that deals with various conflicts. One major internal conflict is repression. Throughout the novel the characters act in strange ways and many of the family members have internal “monsters” that represent the past that they are repressing. In his article, “The Historical Imagination in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God and Migrant Souls”, Antonio C. Marquez’s implicitly asserts a true idea that The Rain God is a story about repression. Marquez’s idea can be supported from an analysis of secondary sources and a reading of the primary text.
In addition, Maria plays the role of the lady in waiting who essentially doesn’t do anything for herself except take orders. Later on the reader soon realizes that, Maria is a strong witty character that takes matters in to her own hands. Maria developes a strategy, first she goes for the messed up drunken Sir Toby and her goal is to straighten him out. Maria confronts Sir Toby about his drunkenness, “That quaffing and drinking will undo you: I heard my lady talk of it yesterday” (1.3.128). Sir Toby begins to take notice in Maria. Maria begins to plot with Toby to bring down Malvolio (the condescending butler) as a practical joke. Through the process of plotting against Malvolio with Toby, Maria develops a back bone something she was not known for with Olivia. Maria took the lead in the plotting and Toby starts taking her orders, “Observe him, for the love of mockery, for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him” (2.5.18-19) As a result of the jokes success, Mari...
He questions whether he belongs to his mother’s family, the Lunas, who live as farmers, or his father’s family, the Márezes, who freely wander the land. His care for his family demonstrates his maturity in attempting to always do the best he can for everyone. Although his parents each want him to follow their families’ paths, they remain absent from Antonio’s true journey of understanding his own thoughts and beliefs, leaving him “frightened to be alone” (Anaya 7); the lack of parental support through his personal conflict leads him to have trouble knowing how to address his confusion, but it also causes Antonio to develop an independence that most people do not possess. He sees hope for finding answers from the moment he meets Ultima when he “knew she held the secret of [his] destiny” (Anaya 13). She chooses him and sends him to save as she helps lead him on his path.
In the novel, Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, a boy goes through many more experiences than any child in the hot summer days in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He witnesses the deaths of his close friends and family. This boy expresses his emotions and grief through his dreams, only to wake up with fear and confusion in his mind. Antonio’s life is filled with dreams that foreshadow future incidents, as well as influences Antonio’s beliefs of religion and ideas of innocence.
At the outset, an insightful reader needs to draft the general boundaries of allegory and symbolism in the story. To put it most simple, the problem of distinguishing between good and evil undergoes a discussion. It is not difficult to notice that the Grandmother stands for good and the Misfit for evil. But such a division would be a sweeping and superficial generalisation, for both the characters epitomize good and evil traits. Moral evaluation is a very complex process and it is not the human who is to decide on that. There are rather various degrees of goodness and evil, both interwoven, also in their religiousness. Th...
His mother, Maria, introduces him to Catholicism by sending him to catechism and church. Maria dreams that he will assume a role in her family and become a farmer and even a priest to lead her people. However, his father, Gabriel, expects him to become a vaquero and hopes this free spirited persona will travel with him to California. Ultima is Antonio’s most influential role model. She is a medicine woman who guides and teaches him tolerance and the importance of making his own decisions.
This modern fairy tale contains diverse characters but none of them is as important as the grandmother. Through her narration, the reader gets all the information needed to understand the story. Indeed, by telling her own story she provides the reader the familial context in which the story is set with her granddaughter and her daughter but even more important, she provides details on her own life which should teach and therefore protect her grand-daughter from men, and then save her to endure or experience her past griefs. This unnamed grand-mother is telling her life under a fairy tale form which exemplify two major properties of fairy tale, as mentioned by Marina Warner in “The Old Wives' Tale”: “Fairy tales exchange knowledge [through the moral] between an older [most of the time feminine] voice of experience and a younger audience”. As suggested in the text, fairy tales are a way to teach insights of life through simple stories directed to, most of the time, younger generations. Most of the time because fairy tales work on different levels of moral which are directed to categories of people, for instance in “Little Red Riding Hood” the moral ...
Through Mariam's checkered background and the diverse people which formed her character, the reader is able to see how much the actions of others around us can contribute to the makings of one's own self-worth. Mariam experienced many conflicting ideas coming from others about what she is accredited to do and her worth in the world. However, Mariam only truly discovered her purpose when she meets Laila and her children, where she is finally able to see her own worth through the salvation of their love and